CurtainUp
CurtainUp

The Internet Theater Magazine of Reviews, Features, Annotated Listings
www.curtainup.com


HOME PAGE

SITE GUIDE

SEARCH

REVIEWS

REVIEW ARCHIVES

ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP

FEATURES

NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings


LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway

NYC Restaurants

BOOKS and CDs

OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Connecticut
Philadelphia
Elsewhere

QUOTES

TKTS

PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS

LETTERS TO EDITOR

FILM

LINKS

MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
Writing for Us
A CurtainUp London London Review
Private Lives


"That was the trouble with Elyot and me, we were like two violent acids bubbling about in a nasty little matrimonial bottle." — Amanda
Private Lives
Anna Chancellor as Amanda and Toby Stephens as Elyot (Photo: Johan Persson)
It starts with a dream coupling as Elyot (Toby Stephens) and Amanda (Anna Chancellor) find themselves on their honeymoon with their new spouses and adjoining balconies overlooking the sea in Deauville, Normandy. Never have Coward's famous warring couple been more over the top and fiercely comic as his acid wit permeates the text and Jonathan Kent's refreshing direction allows the laughter to hover above the pain. Their new husband and wife are simply awful and anyone can see what a terrible mistake these new marriages to conventional people have been for the rebellious Elyot and Amanda.

This production has come from Chichester where Toby Stephens began his career in the theatre in his teens as a stage hand. Stephens' famously real life arguing parents, Dame Maggie Smith and Sir Robert Stephens once played Elyot and Amanda. In this production, Elyot's new wife, the weepily manipulative Sybil, allowing that wonderful line, "Don't quibble, Sybil!" is played by Stephens' real life wife Anna-Louise Plowman. Anthony Chase, with his hair Brylcreemed down, plays the stuff-shirt Victor Prynne. The first act takes place outside the French hotel and the second and third acts in designer Anthony Ward's opulent Parisian apartment for Amanda with its walls hanging with cubist paintings by Georges Braque and decorated with brass relief frieze panels.

The third act of the play depends on the entrance of the misled partners, abandoned on their honeymoon. It's less dramatically thrilling but gives a calmer conclusion as Amanda and Elyot decide what to do next.

Toby Stephens and Anna Chancellor are very impressive as the couple who cannot live without each other nor can they live without fighting —first arguing, zapping each other with one liners and then descending into alcohol fuelled physical attacks on each other which have the power to shock the audience.

The first act is probably the best version I have seen of this oft produced play. But if the alternative spouses are so repulsive, the audience will want Elyot and Amanda reconciled. Elyot and Amanda come from the leisured, moneyed classes where any work is a variant of play. Elyot has been on a world tour since he parted from Amanda for the first time and we are given the picture of him sitting on his own outside the Taj Mahal, that usual photographic cliché of a romantic relationship while she experiments with sexual partners in the new found freedom of the 1920s.

Subscribe to our FREE email updates with a note from editor Elyse Sommer about additions to the website -- with main page hot links to the latest features posted at our numerous locations. To subscribe, E-mail: esommer@curtainup.comesommer@curtainup.com
put SUBSCRIBE CURTAINUP EMAIL UPDATE in the subject line and your full name and email address in the body of the message -- if you can spare a minute, tell us how you came to CurtainUp and from what part of the country.
Private Lives
Written by Noel Coward
Directed by Jonathan Kent

Starring: Toby Stephens, Anna Chancellor, Anthony Calf, Anna-Louise Plowman
With: Sue Kelvin
Designed by Anthony Ward
Lighting: Mark Henderson
Sound: Paul Groothuis
Music: Matthew Scott
Running time: Two hours with one interval
Box Office: 0844 482 5130
Booking to 21st September 2013
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge based on 8th July 2013 performance at the Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 6AR (Tube: Leicester Square/Piccadilly Circus)

REVIEW FEEDBACK
Highlight one of the responses below and click "copy" or"CTRL+C"
  • I agree with the review of Private Lives
  • I disagree with the review of Private Lives
  • The review made me eager to see Private Lives
Click on the address link E-mail: esommer@curtainup.com
Paste the highlighted text into the subject line (CTRL+ V):

Feel free to add detailed comments in the body of the email . . . also the names and emails of any friends to whom you'd like us to forward a copy of this review.

London Theatre Walks


Peter Ackroyd's  History of London: The Biography



London Sketchbook



tales from shakespeare
Retold by Tina Packer of Shakespeare & Co.
Click image to buy.
Our Review


©Copyright 2013, Elyse Sommer.
Information from this site may not be reproduced in print or online without specific permission from esommer@curtainup.com